e tribes the young men must pass
through a dreadful ordeal when they arrive at the age of manhood, which
is supposed to prepare them for the endurance of all future sufferings,
and enables the chiefs to judge of their courage, and to select the
bravest among them to lead in difficult enterprises.

During four days previous to this terrible torture the candidates
observe a strict fast, and are denied all sleep. When the appointed day
arrives, certain strange ceremonies of an allegorical description are
performed, in which all the inhabitants of the village take part. The
candidates then repair to a large caban, where the chiefs and elders of
the tribe are assembled to witness the ordeal. The torture commences by
driving splints of wood through the flesh of the back and breasts of the
victim: he is next hoisted off the ground by ropes attached to these
splints, and suspended by the quivering flesh, while the tormentors
twist the hanging body slowly round, thus exquisitely enhancing the
agony, till a death-faint comes to the relief of the candidate: he is
then lowered to the ground and left to the care of the Great Spirit.
When he recovers animation, he rises and proceeds on his hands and feet
to another part of the caban: he there lays the little finger of the
left hand upon a buffalo skull, as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and
another Indian chops it off. The fore-finger is also frequently offered
up in the same manner: this mutilation does not interfere with the use
of the bow, the only weapon for which the left hand is required. Other
cruel tortures are inflicted for some time, and at length the wretched
victim, reeling and staggering from the intensity of his suffering,
reaches his own dwelling, where he is placed under the care of his
friends. Some of the famous warriors of the tribe pass through this
horrible ordeal repeatedly, and the oftener it is endured, the greater
is their estimation among their people. No bandages are applied to the
wounds thus inflicted, nor is any attention paid to their cure; but,
from the extreme exhaustion and debility caused by want of sustenance
and sleep, circulation is checked, and sensibility diminished; the
bleeding and inflammation are very slight, and the results are seldom
injurious.

The native tribes are engaged in almost perpetual hostility against each
other. War is the great occupation of savage life, the measure of merit,
the high road of ambition, and the source of it